Auctioned While Pregnant: 99 Nights Of My Husband’s Betrayal Chapter 06
The auctioneer looked at the screen.
Then he snorted.
On the screen, the balance glowed in white against black: $0.00
The hall exploded.
“Oh my God, she found some billionaire’s old card in a dumpster and thought she could bluff her way out!”
“Probably stole it from Julian’s desk. Perks of being the wife, right?”
The men exhaled. Shoulders dropped. Grins returned.
The auctioneer tossed the card back at me. It skidded across the table and stopped at the edge.
“Ms. Vance. You’ve wasted our time one too many times tonight. No more chances.”
The bone saws revved. The sound filled my chest cavity, rattled my molars.
The men holding them stepped forward.
“Wait.”
I grabbed the card off the table and slammed it flat against the sensor pad.
“Ms. Vance, your card has nothing—”
The auctioneer’s voice died in his throat.
He stumbled backward. His spine hit the wall behind him with a dull crack.
The screen refreshed.
The number built itself digit by digit.
Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten-thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions, tens of billions, hundreds of billions—
“Trillions?”
The auctioneer’s legs gave out. He hit the floor.
“Sorry about that.” My voice came out flat. Cold. “Looks like my ‘irregular transactions’ just cleared.”
Across the hall, men collapsed into their seats.
One missed entirely—his chair tipped backward, and he went down with it, arms flailing.
The crash of metal and wood rippled through the silence.
“This… this isn’t possible…”
“That kind of money… she could go toe-to-toe with Julian Sterling himself…”
“If she has this kind of backing… who the hell were we just fucking with?”
Faces drained white. Row after row.
I turned toward Julian.
His brow was knotted tight. His jaw locked.
I walked toward him. One step. Another. Another.
I stopped two feet away.
My palm connected with his face before he could speak.
The crack echoed off every surface in the room. His head snapped to the side. He staggered.
“Bastard.”
I swung again.
“No! Please, stop!”
Claire lunged forward, hands outstretched.
Julian’s arm shot around her waist, pulling her behind him.
My second slap landed on his shoulder blade—the hit he’d taken for her.
He kept Claire pinned against his back with one arm. Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth where my first hit had split the skin.
“Whatever you want to do,” he said, his voice low and even, “you do it to me. Claire has nothing to do with this.”
“Ha.”
I grabbed his collar with both hands. Twisted the fabric until it pulled taut against his throat.
“Of course it’s you. Who else would be responsible for this?”
My nails dragged down his chest as my grip shifted. Just a graze. A scratch through the thin fabric of his shirt.
His whole body seized.
One second he was letting me pull him.
The next, something behind his eyes snapped shut, and both his palms slammed into my shoulders.
I flew backward. The corner of the table caught me across the lower back—a white-hot line of pain that shot up my spine and forced water from my eyes before I could stop it.
When I looked up, Julian was pressing both hands over the spot I’d scratched.
His shirt was torn open at the collar. Beneath it, black ink.
A name. Tattooed directly over his heart.
Claire.
The letters were slightly faded at the edges. Old ink. Years old.
It meant… he’d had it before he married me.
My fingers clamped around the table edge behind me.
My husband had another woman’s name carved into his skin, in the place closest to his heart, and I had never known.
“How dare you touch that.”
His voice was something I had never heard before. Something that lived in the dark.
“Julian…” Claire wrapped herself around his arm, her face buried against his sleeve.
He didn’t look at her. He looked at me.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
I lifted my chin. Met his gaze through the bodies now closing in around me—seven, eight men in tactical gear, forming a wall between us.
“Kill me, then. Right here.”
“Julian… Julian, please…”
Claire’s fingers reached up and pressed against his chest. Against the name. Her eyes were red-rimmed.
Something in his face cracked open. He covered her hand with his. Held it there.
Then he looked at me one final time. The kind of look you give something you’re about to throw away.
He turned. His arm came around Claire’s shoulders. They walked toward the exit together.
I watched them leave.
Julian was never the type to start something and walk away without finishing it.
He’d torn my life open in front of three hundred people tonight. He’d had me stripped, auctioned, humiliated, outbid, and cornered.
And now he just… left?
I didn’t have time to think about why.